


Draw the curtains, douse the lights

by Mohini



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint Barton's Farm, Clint and Laura Barton's Family, Gen, Sickfic, Slice of Life, Vomiting, no days off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 07:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17198972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: There’s a kettle of water on the stove, but she hasn’t managed to remember to light the burner beneath it. That’s probably for the best.





	Draw the curtains, douse the lights

The to do list isn’t getting any shorter, and the clock keeps ticking along no matter how much more slowly than usual she’s moving today. Lila spilled an entire gallon of milk across the kitchen floor while trying to make cereal so she could rest. Cooper is at school for now, but when he gets home there will be snack to make and homework to contend with. Nathaniel is cooing in a bouncy seat and that may be the greatest act of mercy this day is going to offer.

Clint is who knows where, being heroic and stuff. Or at least keeping Nat from offing herself in some impulsive act of supposed invincibility. Either way, the important bit is that he’s not here and even if she is very good at pretending to be a regular housewife the one thing she cannot do is text her husband and tell him to leave work and come home.

Most of her friends assume Clint is military, and it’s a shade of the truth if she squints just hard enough. That comes with offers of help with kid shuttling and the day to day grind of being home solo the majority of the time. It also comes with the assumption that she has it all together and she’s used to doing this on her own. It’s another shade of the truth, but at the moment what she wants is her husband, home, and right now.

She grabs yet another mint from the jar on the counter, hoping it will help if only for a few minutes. Her head is filled with cotton wool, every thought slowed and absorbed into nothingness before making it to action. There’s a kettle of water on the stove, but she hasn’t managed to remember to light the burner beneath it. That’s probably for the best. Less likely to burn the house down that way.

The mint is too sweet, and she spits it into her hand, dropping the offensive sticky disc into the metal bin and washing her hands with lemon soap at the sink. The scent is sharp, and while it should smell clean, it brings up a wet belch that has her gripping the edge of the counter and hoping she won’t be sick into the dishes.

The door opens and she forces herself to steady her breathing. Cooper is too perceptive, and if he knows his mom is ill the resentment toward a father rarely home will only grow bigger. Laura already worries about what that’s going to mean when her little boy gets closer to the teen years.

She’s still gripping the counter, still breathing as slowly as possible when footsteps enter the kitchen.

“Laura?”

She turns and finds Maria, still dressed for work and a grocery sack clutched in one hand. There are a lot of questions she would like to ask, but none of them are going to happen because the nausea that’s been haunting her all day is getting worse. She presses a clenched fist to her lips and swallows hard.

“Please don’t make me mop up after you,” Maria says dryly, putting a hand on Laura’s arm above her elbow and guiding her down the hall to the half bath. Maria toes a couple of plastic dinosaurs out of the space before helping her kneel on the mat.

The first gag unleashes a tide of coffee and decongestant pills that makes her sputter and spit in a desperate effort to get the bitter taste off her tongue. Awkward patting on her back does nothing to help. She pitches forward, stomach gurgling and squeezing before another long stream splashes into the water.

Blood roars in blocked ears and Laura gulps down a breath before her stomach clenches again, this time producing little more than a tiny spurt of bile. Benefit of being too congested to fathom actually eating food. The barfing is short lived.

“You done?” Maria asks after she flushes the mess away and presses back to sit on her heels.

“Mmhmm,” Laura murmurs, wiping eyes and lips with a wad of toilet tissue and taking a few experimental breaths to gauge how much the vomiting helped or didn’t. The pressure behind her eyes is substantially worse, but the queasy disorientation is fading fast. Sum total – pretty much nil in either direction but at least she doesn’t feel any more like death. Motherhood doesn’t come with sick days.

Which brings up the question her barfing interrupted her from asking earlier.

“You’re not here officially, are you?”

There are _reasons_ for official visits. None of them are good. Some of them are inconceivable. Even thinking of them pulls her back over the toilet to retch up a few thin strings of saliva. When she flushes again, Maria hands her a tissue.

“Lila called Nat. Nat called Fury. Fury sent me.”

“Say what?” Laura asks, trying to make sense of that chain of phone tag.

“Auntie Nat said to call her if I ever need her,” Lila pipes up from the doorway.

Laura blinks, trying to form a coherent answer to that declaration. She goes with a question instead.

“How did you call Auntie Nat, sweetheart?”

“Daddy’s extra sat phone,” Lila answers, calm as you please.

She’s going to have to find out how Lila knows what a sat phone is. And why she knows her father has not one, but two – and the location of a spare. Words probably need to be exchanged with Nat at some point too, about what is and is not a reasonable order to give a little kid.

 But for now, she’s going to be grateful that she has a child capable of following those orders. Even the awkward comfort Maria offers is appreciated as she helps her to her feet and steadies her on the trek up to bed. Lila’s chattering about the things Mommy needs to do that Maria will need to help with and Laura leaves them to it. The blankets are warm and soft, the pillow is perfectly cool for the next couple seconds, and Maria puts a trash bin and a box of tissues next the bed with instructions to make use of them in emergencies.

The curtains are drawn, the lights flipped off, and her eyes drift shut. There’s far too much to do to take time off, but if someone else is here to cover the responsibilities, she can allow herself to rest a few hours at least.


End file.
